One Big Year End Post

Yes, I realize that it has been almost a month since my last post. I've been a bit busy, so please forgive me. Instead of trying to recap what we have been up to for the last month in individual posts, I am just going to put it all in one post.

December was a pretty good month. We were busy as usual, Daniel working, Olivia finishing up school for this year and then trying to get our stuff packed to head back to the Lou for the last two weeks of the year. We found out that at the end of the current preschool semester that Olivia's favorite teacher would be resigning from SLC due to family illness. Olivia was crushed when I told her as was I because her lead teacher leaves a bit to be desired. Hopefully the teacher hired to fill Mrs. Carr's spot will step up to the plate. Daniel was able to save a week of vacation time to take in December and his plant is on shut down the week between Christmas and New Year's, so his last day of work was December 16 and he goes back January 4. It is weird to have him home so much since usually he works 80+ hours a week and I barely see him except on Saturday and Sundays.

So since he had almost 3 weeks off, we headed back to the Lou on December 17. Our first stop was at The Lake of the Ozarks to spend a couple days with his mom and sister. Then on the 19th we headed to Centralia to spend the remainder of our holiday with my mom. She had to work most days, so we were able to carve out time to spend with our friends and family and not take away from our time with her. We utilized our time well and were able to see everyone that we had hoped. We have a wonderful Christmas with family. We decided to head back to Houston on December 29. Even though I loved spending time with our family and friends, I was so glad to be back home. We drove 3000 miles in two weeks so we were and still are pretty exhausted. On New Year's Eve, the weather was perfect, about 80 degrees so there was lots of activity going on. Apparently, fireworks are a HUGE deal down here. It is Monday, January 1 as I write this and people are still shooting off fireworks. On NYE night, we went down to our friends' Joe and Misty's house, they were having a block party. It was a fun time but it was cut short for me because Olivia was scared of all the loud fireworks going off all around so she begged me to bring her home. Daniel and Cameron stayed for a while and Daniel said it was a fun time. The kiddos were both in bed by 9:45ish and since it was such a nice night, Daniel and I decided to sit outside and watch all the fireworks shows. I have to say, our neighbors a couple doors down put on a television special worthy fireworks show and the best part was we didn't even have to leave our backyard. About 10:30, I was out in our driveway looking at some other fireworks and I saw our neighbor from across the street out. We started talking and ended up standing outside for a while talking. I haven't really gotten to talk to her much since we lived here as she has been receiving chemo for breast cancer but I really enjoyed our time in the driveway. After a while in the driveway, we all came to our backyard and were just sitting around drinking. We ended up doing that till 1:00 am. It was such a nice night. I hope that Lana and I can start hanging out more, she is a very nice person.

*On a side note, someone had the nerve to come in our garage and help themselves to our weed eater, edger and blower. The edger and blower were practically brand new. Since we don't know when this exactly happened, it was most likely sometime between Thanksgiving and when we left to go to St. Louis, we can't really file a police report. Since it more than likely going to cost about $600ish to replace all of the these things, we (I) hope Daniel can borrow our neighbors for a while as we won't be able to get new ones for a some time. Our best guess as to what happened to them is one of the many yard crews that cuts various lawns around ours, saw Daniel using it and decided it would be a nice addition to their arsenal of yard equipment. It really frosts our biscuits that someone would do that as we try to be good, honest people and teach our kids the same values and then something like this happens.

As a new year is upon us, I have quite a few "resolutions" swirling around in my head but am not ready to reveal them yet as I have some logistics to work through first. I know resolutions are supposed to be made before the New Year comes but I say better late than never.

I hope everyone had a joyous holiday season and a safe and happy New Year.

Cameron's 2nd Birthday

Even though I am a few days late, Happy Birthday to Cameron. I cannot believe that she is two years old already. It seems like just yesterday she was born. The last 2 years have flown by. She is such a special girl. She is very independent, funny, caring, and super duper lovable. We didn't really do much to celebrate but I think she had a good birthday anyway.

Happy Birthday Cameron, we love more than you will ever know.

Follow Up to Thanksgiving....

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I know a lot of the time I seem to be negative Nancy and for the most part I am. I am still adjusting to being in Texas all alone and have it hard to really made any genuine friends down here, so I am so incredibly lonely.

So instead of my tale of woe, I want to take a few minutes and say what I am thankful for and I have many, many things to be truly thankful for.

1. I am thankful for the best husband, who is incredibly loving and hardworking.
2. I am thankful that my girls have such an amazing daddy.
3. I am thankful that God found me worthy of such truly incredible kiddos.
4. I am thankful for my awesome family.
5. I am thankful for better friends than I deserve.
6. I am thankful for a warm(or cool) house to live in.
7. I am thankful that we have enough.
8. I am thankful that I have transportation to get where I need to go.
9. I am thankful for Olivia's preschool and fostering her love of learning.
10. I am thankful for Texas.

I could go on and on, but I just wanted everyone to know that I am not as bitter of a person as I might seem to be. I know that this time of year is hard because as many people are giving thanks, a lot more people are struggling. Struggling to be able to provide necessities for their families, much less indulge them in frivolous gifts. I find it hard for me to draw the line as far as presents are concerned. I want my kids to have everything they want(doesn't every parent) but I also don't want them to feel entitled. They have way more than a lot of kids and I want them to know that. I started this year making Olivia donate toys before her birthday and Christmas in order to make room for new toys and hopefully to teach her that donating to the less fortunate is a good thing.

Ok, enough of my rambling. Our Thanksgiving dinner turned out really good. The food was very delicious. The only thing that went wrong was I forgot to put out the cranberry sauce and no one even missed it.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!

Wow, I have been slacking...

Wow, it has been a while since I updated. I guess that is because not much has been going on around here. I cannot believe that tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Where does time go? Next week is Cameron's birthday, again where does time go? Let's see, what has been going on? Not much, Daniel working too much, Olivia is still loving school, Cameron is learning new things everyday and I am trying my best to keep everything running smoothly.

Tomorrow is a going to be a hard day for me I think. Even though we have been never been much of a big family gathering for Thanksgiving type of family, it is still going to be very hard for me to be so far away from family and friends. And to put the icing on the cake, Daniel has to work. Daniel's aunt and uncle recently moved to Cypress, TX(which is about 30 minutes from us) and we are having them over for dinner. That's right, I said we are having them over. I have never attempted to cook anything that resembles a Thanksgiving dinner, so this should be interesting, to say the least. And like I mentioned before, Daniel has to work so it's all on me. I will let you know how it all turns out....

I had some pictures I was going to upload but it Blogger doesn't seem to want to cooperate. I will try and get some uploaded later.

Happy Halloween

Last Thursday Olivia had her party at school. Needless to say she was EXCITED. She constantly talked about it for the few days leading up to the big day and woke up extra early on the day of to make sure we weren't late getting to school. She got lots of goodies to bring home and had a good day.

Then yesterday was offically Halloween. Again, Olivia was very excited to go trick or treating. We put a bowl of candy on our porch for any trick or treaters that we may encounter. Not sure how many came to the door but I know that we got a lot of candy and it was all gone when we got back. Our kiddos made out like bandits in the candy department. We will probably still be eating candy at Christmas.

Pumpkin Patch here we come...

Daniel and I had talked about taking the girls to a pumpkin patch before Halloween arrived. Of course, I had these grand ideas of an Eckert'sish type of farm. Well, I was sadly disappointed. We found a cute little patch at a local church here in Humble. It was cute but only occupied 10 minutes of our time. But either way, we made the most of it and had a fun time.

A Reader in the Making

Olivia loves, loves, loves books. We read to her all the time and she just soaks it up. She has a few of the beginning reading books(#1) that we read. Lately though, she has been "reading" them to herself. She is very good at it. I know most of it is memorization as she doesn't get every word right, but she is definitely on the right track